New baby on the way!

Our family has some very good news to share: we found out this week that we are expecting another baby! While we are a *little* surprised by the timing, Mark and I had hoped for more children and are both delighted and humbled at the prospect of becoming parents again.

Please pray for us:

1. Thank God for His new creation!

2. I range from queazy to completely-loosing-my-cookies sick, and the latter can strike at any time of the day. It's hard for me to keep my blood sugar even and stay on my toes with the kids and household activities. Please pray I stay in good health and find creative ways to feed and care for my family. (By the way, the nausea reminds me a lot of my pregnancy with Hannah ... another girl?)

3. Please pray for peace of mind: adjusting to being pregnant again and preparing for raising three young children (Calling on the wisdom of all you parents of multiple kids!)

Here's the longer story of how we found out (if you have some time on your hands):

A few of us in the family have had colds the last two weeks and I thought this cold had just really taken the wind out of me. Then I thought maybe it was strep... or a stomach bug ... or food poisoning... Mark joked that maybe we were pregnant again and I just laughed and laughed... I reminded him, as I often do, that though I would gladly take another child (or two or three!) into our home right now, I am SO not ready to be pregnant again. I still have goals to reach: wearing my regular winter wardrobe for the first time in years, a daily exercise routine, complete systemization of our household, world peace, you get the idea. Then I started thinking... and calculating... oh my. I ran out for a pregnancy test, and I am telling you that red line jumped off the stick so fast I almost fell over. Actually that's just what I did; I went and just fell in Mark's arms and couldn't say anything. He gave me a huge smile and we both just smiled and hugged and couldn't say anything for the longest time. I am so glad he was there for that moment because a few hours later he was on the plane for Houston (business) and I needed a LOT of encouraging hugs before he left. All week long we called each other and giggled over this new and still somehow unbelievable news (though the intensifying nausea was pretty convincing). With Hannah and Adam, we waited several weeks to share our news with the world, but somehow (maybe because we're not on the other side of the world this time?) it felt like torture not to tell you all right away! So now you know our wonderful "secret" - and I'll be sure to keep you up on all the unfolding details here.